


Until the time...

by jillyfae



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Epilogue, Gen, Introspection, Minor Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Minor Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28300545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jillyfae/pseuds/jillyfae
Summary: Nile starting to settle in and understand her new life, her new family, as their first Christmas approaches.(Inspired by Frank Ocean'sGodspeed, as Nile would have wanted.)
Relationships: Andy | Andromache & Booker | Sebastien & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf & Nicky | Nicolò & Quynh
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30
Collections: The Old Guard Gift Exchange 2020





	Until the time...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [morallygreywaren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morallygreywaren/gifts).



Andy doesn't listen to music.

Not on purpose, or not as far as Nile can tell, at least. She doesn't _engage_ when someone else flicks on the stereo in the kitchen, the radio in the car, never hums or sings along. Nile's not sure she even _hears_ the words, not really.

But sometimes Nile will hear something on a breeze, faint and whispery, music like the memory of a ghost, and she'll look at Andy and realize that the stance of her hips has changed, that the pace of her stride has shifted. 

Andy is always in step with the rhythm of the world around her, even when she thinks she's entirely separate. 

(Nile thinks she's getting better, starting to see, starting to realize all the ways she's connected.

Now that she's dying.)

Joe, unsurprisingly, tends to listen to _classy_ music. Old jazz, older classics, instrumentals and orchestras that hold just as much emotion between their notes as the poetry and art he clearly also appreciates. 

Nicky plays disco on blast when it's his turn to cook and for a while Nile's not sure if he actually likes it, or if it's just because it makes Joe laugh to hear it, the sound half-despair and half-delight.

She _thinks_ he likes it, Nicky doesn't indulge in things that don't serve a purpose, or bring Joe comfort, but that laugh would probably be enough for him. It's almost enough for her, makes her smile every time.

(She _knows_ he likes it, the afternoon they're stuck in a small hotel in the middle of nowhere, rain pouring down, loud on the roof and windows, and they curl up on one of the double beds and watch _Mamma Mia!_ and Nicky sings along to every damn word. Joe sighs, but he puts down his book and joins them, laughing when he stumbles over the lyrics and Nicky grins at him. Even Andy smiles, her head resting on Joe's shoulder, her eyes blinking slowly near the end of the movie. Nile thinks she doesn't even have any nightmares that night.)

Nile finds herself wondering what sort of music Booker likes, what he used to listen to, what he listens to _now,_ if it soothes him in his exile, or if he finds things to help him wallow in his misery. 

She fears it's the latter, _sad white-boy emo shit,_ but she _hopes..._

She hopes he's healing.

Like Andy is, slow but sure, at last. 

She has to hope, for Joe, for Nicky, for Andy. (For herself, and the future that stretches so far before her.) She has to hope—for Booker himself. She remembers how he made Andy laugh in the mine, when Nile had barely ever seen her smile, and she wants to meet _that_ Booker, the one from before and around all the despair and grief, the one who wasn't _entirely_ lost, not yet.

Maybe she will, some day. 

She has a lot of days to make it happen. 

She doesn't have to worry about the how, not yet.

_A hundred years..._

Until the night she dreams of him, and she realizes it's going to be a lot less than that. 

At first she thinks it's just another nightmare; she has her share of them, even as young as she is in comparison to her new friends, new family. Booker's shoulders are hunched, she can see that tension in his face she'd hoped he'd finally let go... 

Only she isn't seeing the Booker she knows, not really, she's seeing him how someone else does, more rage and less regret. 

She sees her own hands, _not her hands,_ familiar hands, smooth and soft looking instead of bloody, the air, _there's air,_ warm against her skin. 

There's music playing, spilling out an open window, some old lesser-known Spice Girls song Nile can't quite remember the title of, the familiar lilt of that cheeky sense of humor that made them so popular for so long.

_She hates it, hates where they came from, hates how blind and selfish they are, how stupid, how little they know about what the world is really like..._

Nile wakes, a gasp and a jerk that's familiar, and entirely different than ever before. 

She blinks in the darkness, ignores the familiar shift of Andy walking around in the other room, following the path of the fairy lights they'd run along the ceiling and windows, pretending she doesn't know that Nile is having nightmares again. 

Nile blinks again.

_Quynh hates British pop._

Quynh is _free..._

Quynh is free and isn't trying to come home, isn't trying to find _Andy_.

(She might not have been drowning, not anymore, but Nile could still _feel it_ in her thoughts, could still feel the weight of the water, the cold of the iron, the pain and the blood and the endless endless screaming...) 

Nile closes her eyes, and considers, for just a moment, _not saying anything._

Maybe not ever.

Maybe just not until _after_ Christmas? Not that the holiday means much to the rest of them, but they're going through the motions for Nile, helping her adjust to her new world with this tradition lingering from her old one... 

But no.

That way lies madness. The same sort that took out Booker, that may be doing the same to Quynh.

Nile lies back down, blinks at the faint glow of warm white between the top of her door and the edge of the frame; the light from the decorations she'd put up. She could let Joe and Nicky sleep for a little longer, at least, let Andy have one last quiet night. 

She'll tell them over breakfast, and then they'll decide what to do next, to rescue their friend, their family, the woman they'd never forgotten, not in five-hundred years. 

They'll save her, Nile is sure of it.

Together.


End file.
